I have been working on a Word document converted from a PDF. I use Word 2011 for Mac. The header contains the page numbers within a text box. The problem is that the page number is the same on several pages. When I change it on one page, it changes to the same number on other pages, and when I remove the text box from one header it is removed from the other pages as well. I have tried making a section break and a page break, but the problem remains. I am thinking there should be a link of some sort that I am missing. I have checked my toolbar to see if there is a simple way of breaking the link, but can't find any. Any suggestions?

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Tom in LondonUnited Kingdom Local time: 23:42Member (2008) Italian to English

Trouble

Mar 8, 2015

Hi Norskpro

Just a few weeks ago I got myself into terrible trouble with an agency, because of a similar problem.

The original document was a PDF, which they converted to Word for me, although the conversion was badly done.

When I did the translation a lot of re-formatting was required and the text often flowed from one page to another in a different way from the original.

I was able to adjust things quite well in the end, except for the page numbers, which as in your case, were in a text box in a footer. I tried everything I could think of, and consulted various websites, in a desperate effort to get the page numbers to run sequentially through the document, but in the end I had no success and to meet my deadline, I had to send the document to the agency apologising for the page numbers.

This got me into terrible trouble. This job was one of the worst experiences I've ever had.

As a consequence, I resolved never to accept converted PDF documents again. Wrestling with them makes the job take twice as long and the results are never satisfactory.

I wish you good luck!

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Trouble, yes. A lot of trouble. One lives and one learns.
Before being given the job, I asked about the document format. Word, I was told. Oh great...no problem then....
I should have asked if it was converted from a PDF. Actually, because the Word version I got was so bad I don't feel that it is my responsibility to fix the bad formatting, but still I have fixed all the formatting in the document apart from this issue with the header. I shall probably send it off without that part being in order. But I do find it frustrating not to be able to find a solution to this problem.

I think Word should be redesigned from the beginning to make everything easy to understand, more logical, more clear.

It would also be great if there is a better way of converting PDF files. I asked the client for the PDF file, which I then converted both via Adobe and via the Mac Automator. Neither was very good for this job.

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... it was easy, but I don't know if the later versions are the same — I can't get my head round those at all!

In the header / footer mini tool bar, there is an icon that looks like a sheet of paper with arrows top and bottom — this is the button you have to click so that the headers / footers will be 'linked' across section breaks — or not.

What I have found happens is that the OCR splits the document into massies of unnecessary sections, and then the headers / footers may (or may not) be linked across the section breaks.

In your case, the header is probably staying the same within any one section, and then changing only at the next section break.

You may have 2 issues to deal with: firstly, this matter of 'same as previous' linking (which behaves rather counter intuitively when you want to turn it off and/or on. The best thing is to get the header right in the forst section from which you want the pages to run, and then go through all subsequent headers and every time they change, go and link 'same as previous' again; alternatively, if you're doing it right from the outset, you might just want to clear all section breaks out of the document and then start again as you re-format.

The other problem you seem to have is that thz page numbers are in text boxes (almost certainly the result of the OCR) — normally, they shouldn't need to be, and I suspect the fact they are in a text boxe means you are just getting a number, and not a 'page number' field; again, the best thing is probably to scrap those text boxes and simply insert the page number field '#' from the header / footer mini toolbar; that way, the numbers will change from page to page.

I hope that's clear enough for you to make sense of it!

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I believe I have seen this mentioned somewhere else, if it means a tool bar that pops up when you click in the header or footer area. Is that what you mean, Tony? I do not have such a tool bar, apparently. When I click in the header nothing pops up.

About the text box, I thought perhaps that the reason for this is that the page numbering is with text, such as Page 1 of 5.

Where could my mini tool bar be?

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Maybe it no longer exists — you didn't tell us which versio of Word you are using?

Joakim mentions it in a ribbon, so perhaps that's where you need to look for it?

As for the text with page number issue, that's no problem and doesn't require a text box; you simply type in the required text, like 'Page' and then insert the 'page number' field immediately after it.

The text boxes are usually just the OCR's way of putting an isolated piece of text in an odd place; remember that to the dumb OCR, it doesn't know if it is simply a page number that someone has manually type on each page, or an automatic field.

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I followed the suggestions in the link you gave, Joakim. I have now managed to first make "next page break", then to find the link box, where I unlinked the pages. Oh, what a relief. So simple, really, when one knows what to do. So there is no mini tool bar, and everything was in the ribbon, though the header tools in the ribbon are hidden until one clicks on the header in the document.

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